Is it ok to read my child’s diary

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to This Complex Life. In this episode, I talk about whether it’s okay to read your child’s diary. A question I sometimes get asked when I tell people I’m a therapist. While it might feel like the right thing to do when you’re worried, maybe you don’t know what’s happening in their life, or perhaps you’re really curious to kind of find out why.

[00:00:28] Reading their private thoughts can damage trust and really affect your relationship in the long run. From my experience working with teens and families, I’ve seen how breaching trust can impact the cohesion of the family and can actually impact their emotional development. I’ve also seen the impact this can have on adults who remember quite profound instances of breaches of trust where a parent, sometimes even a grandparent, has read their diary without their permission and it’s really had quite large consequences for their, for their lives as adults.

[00:00:59] So I’m going to share with you some ways that you can build trust and connection with your teen. So what are the impacts of reading their diary? One of the largest is It breaches trust. Once trust is broken, especially by someone they love, it can have lasting effects. This breach can erode the confidence that they have in you, but it can also influence future relationships.

[00:01:25] They might even struggle to trust others. Fearing that their privacy will always be violated. I mean, it makes sense, right? If someone who is supposed to love you unconditionally and be a really big trusting figure in your life goes behind your back and reads your deepest, most intimate thoughts without your permission, it makes it really hard to trust other people.

[00:01:48] It also, role models behavior. And this is something that parents find particularly confronting when I work with them in my Connected Teens course or in one on one work. And that is you have to role model the kind of behavior you want from your children. So if you want them to be respectful of someone’s privacy, They learn that by having their privacy respected.

[00:02:14] So reading their diary without permission models, maybe sneaky or dishonest behavior. And I know that that can be quite confronting for parents. The reality is they need to feel what it’s like for someone to respect their boundaries, to respect their privacy. If they’re going to grow up into adults who can do that themselves, if you want them to be, um, Open and authentic and take responsibility when they make mistakes.

[00:02:42] They need to know what it feels like to have that done to them. That you can role model authenticity. You can role model taking responsibility and accountability for mistakes. If you model sneaking around, lying, hiding, using your own dysregulation as a reason to breach trust. It’s role modeling that that behavior is okay.

[00:03:06] It might also teach it’s okay to violate someone else’s privacy if it serves your own needs, which can be a harmful message for teens to learn when they’re navigating relationships. Another reason, and there’s quite a few, I’m going to go through, it disrespects parent child boundaries. Healthy boundaries are really important in any relationship and it’s really It’s so beneficial when parents can role model this for their children.

[00:03:32] When parents cross a line such as reading a child’s diary without permission, it undermines the respect that they need. to feel independent and secure. And overstepping that line, not respecting that boundary, can create emotional distance that can last for years into the relationship. And for some people, that trust is never recovered.

[00:03:53] So maintaining healthy boundaries and respecting them are very important. And it has to start with the parent, with role modeling that behavior. Following on from that, it might inhibit. future communication. And what I mean by this is maybe you were desperate to know something in that moment and you got a snippet of one of the deep dark thoughts.

[00:04:14] It might mean that in future they will share less with you, that they will come to you with less. They will find other ways to keep things private and it’ll impact the relationship moving forward. That authentic relationship that you probably really want and hope for. Can be destroyed in these moments.

[00:04:32] It might make them think you don’t trust them. You don’t respect their autonomy and they definitely won’t trust you. And this can lead to them withholding information in other areas of their life as well. It can also leave them without a really valuable tool that they rely on. If they know that someone is reading their diary.

[00:04:53] They might stop writing. And then it means they lose a very valuable outlet for their thoughts to grapple with big ideas, to info dump, to just vent for whatever purpose that diary or that journaling practice was serving. They might lose that. And. It’s a really, really helpful coping strategy. It’s one that I encourage a lot of my clients to use.

[00:05:16] It’s one that I sometimes use as well. There are different journaling prompts, diaries that you can use online, handwritten, a whole bunch of stuff. And they can be so valuable for processing events, exploring feelings, even just recording different milestones and events. And if that is taken away because of breach of trust.

[00:05:37] You lose that as an outlet and that can be really damaging. It might also impact their emotional development. It sends the message that private thoughts are not respected. Which can hinder their emotional growth. If they’re using journaling as a way to process emotions, breaching that space might mean that they hesitate.

[00:05:58] To engage in any sort of self reflection in the future. And we know self reflection is so valuable. It’s such a valuable skill to have as a teen, as an adult, across the lifespan. By reading their private thoughts and not respecting that they are private, it can really hinder. And can make it hard to engage in any sort of self reflection.

[00:06:20] And these violations, and it might sound like a harsh word, but for some people, for many people who’ve come to me with this, being on the receiving end of a parent or a grandparent reading their diary, That violation can last a lifetime and it can have serious long term consequences. It can impact their ability, like I said, for self reflection.

[00:06:42] It can take away a really valuable tool that they use to emotionally regulate or debrief or unpack or explore things. It can also impact intimacy and trust in relationships, and it might. mean that they struggle in future relationships to confine in others because they’re always worried that someone’s going to share their private or secret things or they might find that they shut down and feel the need to protect themselves emotionally.

[00:07:08] If you want to have a strong connected relationship you need to respect their privacy. It’s a foundation of trust and we need to respect privacy, respect boundaries. The only way they’re going to learn to do that when they grow up or even in that household with you is if they know what it feels like to have it done to them.

[00:07:29] Okay, so just as we expect privacy as adults, teenagers have the same right to expect that privacy when they’re writing in a journal or in a diary. They need a space to process emotions. Without feeling like they’re being watched or judged. So what happens if you’re the parent who feels the urge to read the diary because you’re worried?

[00:07:48] It’s natural to want to understand what’s happening for them. If you’re worried, we know that adolescence is a time where teenagers withdraw a little bit from the family and they want some extra privacy and some space that might even confide in their friends a lot more. And this can be really wounding for parents.

[00:08:04] So if you’re worried about them. And you don’t know how to get that information. You might start to think, maybe I could do this. Maybe I could read their diary. The impacts of that could be detrimental to the relationship. So if you’re feeling the urge to read their diary, have a think about why. You might be worried and that makes sense.

[00:08:25] It still doesn’t make that behavior okay. Rather than them feeling secure and feeling like they can trust you, which might already be difficult for them, reading their diary will shatter that completely and make it near impossible for that relationship to have the trust that you want. So notice your own needs.

[00:08:45] Reflect on why you’re feeling the urge. To read their diary. Are you anxious about their well being? Are you feeling disconnected from them? Do you feel rejected that they’re not opening up to you anymore? And maybe they did when they were a little or perhaps you had this vision of what your relationship might look like And I’ve said many times you can come to me with anything and they’re not.

[00:09:08] You need to recognize What is coming up for you? What your emotional trigger is and address those needs without crossing the boundary. So ask yourself You Do you need to know what’s happening? When you feel compelled to read their private thoughts, ask yourself, why? Is it out of fear or is it out of a need to control the situation?

[00:09:28] Does it trigger feelings of rejection or disconnection? These emotions are yours to manage, not your child’s. It’s not their responsibility to manage your emotions. It’s a hard one. I get it. Especially if maybe you didn’t have these role models growing up. It’s really hard to do that when you might not have had it done for you or to know how to even, what this might even look like.

[00:09:52] If it feels like a foreign concept, I want to normalize that feeling for a moment. It’s okay to feel rejected. It’s okay to feel disconnected. It’s okay to feel confused, worried, scared. It’s not okay to read their diary. So all of those feelings that you’re feeling are fine. They’re okay. Not all behaviours that you are compelled to do, or urged to do, are okay.

[00:10:17] So that’s a really important thing, is to try and check in with yourself, and think about what this is for you. You might want to seek some support from another parent, a friend, a family member, a therapist, if this is something that’s a real struggle to you. Because it’s hard. You want to know what’s happening.

[00:10:32] You want to be involved in their life. You might have worries or concerns, but reading their diary is not going to be a helpful strategy. It breaks trust. It can break disconnection and it role models behavior that is probably not what you want your team to be doing. I’ve got a few tips that can help you build connection with your team.

[00:10:51] If you’re worried about them, have a conversation and say, I’m worried about you. I’ve noticed that you’re a little bit more withdrawn than normal and it’s okay not to talk to me right now. I’d like to have a conversation with you about it tomorrow or on Saturday. So don’t blindside them. Let them know that you’re worried about specific behavior.

[00:11:11] But if you say something like, I’m really worried about you and you’re being super moody. That’s not going to be helpful. That feels quite insulting and critical. It can also be really helpful to say, I’ve been fighting the urge to try and like crawl into your life somehow. I want to be involved. I want to be a part of it.

[00:11:31] And. I know that I can be a bit of a helicopter parent or that that’s probably not what you need right now. So I’d like to find a way that we can connect while you get to do your teenage thing. Could we do, and maybe list three activities and say which of these three is Less crap for you. Or can you please give me an idea of something that we could do together that’s maybe half an hour a week and then let’s see if we can make that work.

[00:11:58] And they might not want to do something that’s very deep and meaningful, that’s very Um, confronting, you know, lots of eye contact that might not be their thing. It might’ve been when they were kids. It might never have been. And that’s okay. It’s showing them that you can trust them, that they’ll come to you if that connection is strong and you build that connection by showing an interest in what they like.

[00:12:19] So if they want to watch crappy TV with you for half an hour and not make any eye contact and not talk. I know you might have the desire to connect and you might really, really want it, but that’s not what they want right now. And so it’s finding this balance. I’ve also got a journal prompt that you can work with.

[00:12:38] If you’ve got some journaling questions that you might even want to say, okay, look, I’ve noticed you write a diary. I also write one too. Um, here are some prompts that we can use together. So you can actually use the idea of journaling as a strategy for connection without even reading it. I’ve heard some stories where parents have a shared So they might write in a little message for their child and then the child writes that back.

[00:13:03] And that’s been a really helpful strategy for some people where finding the words can be hard, or they find it easier to be a bit more composed when they get a chance to put it together. Breathe and reflect and draft something and so you can find different ways to communicate. Hopefully you have found that helpful.

[00:13:20] This is the first in several episodes, a part of this mini series all about improving connection with teens. So tune in for the next episode. And if you want some tools and strategies on how to connect more effectively with your teen, check out this video. Join my Connected Teens program. There is a live cohort running very soon.

[00:13:41] Thank you for listening. To keep the conversation going, head on over to Instagram or LinkedIn and follow me. If you’d like to keep updated with episodes and other interesting things happening in mental health, join my weekly This Complex Life newsletter, where I’ll share tools, tips, and insight. There’s a link in the show notes.

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